Tharun Moorthy on Directing Mohanlal in ‘Thudarum’: I Didn’t Want to Misuse His Brand
The 'Saudi Vellakka' filmmaker opens up about his initial insecurities, the pressure of working with a superstar, and why the content had to be worth Mohanlal’s time.
When Tharun Moorthy was approached to direct Thudarum, a film starring Malayalam cinema icon Mohanlal, his first reaction was anxiety. “I started feeling tensed about the process of shooting, [of saying] ‘Action and cut!’, to a stalwart like Mohanlal,” Moorthy recalls in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India. “Even giving suggestions to an actor like him gave me an inferiority complex.”
The project, initiated by veteran producer Rejaputra Renjith after watching Moorthy’s Saudi Vellakka, came with both opportunity and baggage. The script, which had been in development for nearly eight years, was now being entrusted to a relatively new director. “They could have gone to any filmmaker,” Moorthy says. “I still don’t have a clear answer to ‘why me?’” But he suspects it was partly because of his ability to write and direct with emotional depth. “Renjith felt that younger directors weren’t handling emotions well. He liked how I dealt with them.”
Moorthy, whose breakout film Operation Java was made under the pressure of proving he could complete a feature at all, says his journey wasn’t shaped by dreams of working with stars like Mammootty or Mohanlal. “The only dream was to somehow complete one film,” he says. “Even when Mammootty called me after Saudi Vellakka, I told him I hadn’t found a subject that gave me that creative ‘kick’. He said, ‘You come to me when you find this kick.’”
That ethos shaped Moorthy’s approach to Thudarum as well. Though the subject was already in place when he joined the project, he viewed the challenge as integrating Mohanlal into his own filmmaking world, rather than constructing one around the actor’s stardom. “I didn’t want to misuse a brand like Mohanlal,” he says. “My idea was to carefully place that brand within the quality of my content.”
Despite early nerves and a short window of 45 days before shooting began, Moorthy leaned into his process. “There’s no hierarchy on my sets,” he says. “I have my own syllabus for how I run things based on what I’ve heard and learned from others.”
He adds, "I met Lalettan with a full-bound script, apart from the details of the casting and the list of technicians. He was not at all bothered about that; he was just supportive of whatever I needed for this film. After I was done with that discussion in Lalettan’s apartment, I was still a bit nervous and worried. That’s when Anthony Perumbavoor told me that about how most directors faltered when they were trying to build a new world for a star like Mohanlal."
A key turning point came when producer Perumbavoor reassured him: “They wanted Mohanlal to be placed into your filmmaking world, not the other way around.” That validation, Moorthy says, made all the difference. "That gave me a lot of confidence. That’s when all my inferiority went away. Because I never worked with any other director, I have my own syllabus for the way I run my sets; it is based on what I had heard and learnt from other directors."
Watch the full conversation on The Hollywood Reporter India's YouTube channel tomorrow